Interview with emergeapp.net’s CEO Benjamin Yee

Tention Free : Tell us more about yourself and how you got involved with EMERGE App?

I didn’t set out to start a cloud-based software company from the start. I didn’t join hackathons, startup competitions or anything like that to find the Next Big Thing in software.

EMERGE App actually was born from a desperate need to get my inventory in order when I ran a custom t-shirt printing business back in school. Back in those younger and naive days I was itching to run a business and make some money. Since I had no budget for software, I used spreadsheets to manage my business. But in no time I had multiple copies of my spreadsheets saved locally and all over the cloud.

It worked OK in the beginning but then I started to forget to invoice my customers. Orders were coming in faster than we could fulfil them. T-shirts in all sorts of designs, colours and sizes were being overstocked. My money was increasingly being tied up in stock. It wasn’t a good time as I spent hours solving issues in operations rather than selling or following-up with repeat customers.

I then looked at some inventory management solutions out there but they were too expensive, too complicated or didn’t have the features that we needed yesterday. So I decided to build one instead. Along the way we thought that other small and medium-sized businesses dealing in inventory must surely face the same problems as us?

So we spun out our in-house inventory management solution and called it EMERGE App. We wanted other businesses to emerge from whatever they were doing in the past to manage their inventories and embrace a new way of doing things online.

Tention Free : What makes EMERGE App so different in the SaaS marketplace?

Given our humble beginnings as an in-house solution for our small business, we decided to focus on small and medium-sized businesses around the world. Dealing with stock is a global problem no matter what country you’re in or what language you speak. I’m proud to say that we currently have users in 40 countries on 5 continents. I don’t think we can add any more continents unless there’s a trading and distribution business in Antarctica!

Since we initially designed the software for ourselves, we wanted the user interface to be cool-looking and easy to use. You shouldn’t really have to thumb through thick manuals or attend “training courses” just to learn our software. That’s a waste of time in my opinion and small businesses can’t afford downtime to adjust to badly designed software. Users should be able to login and pick up skills along the way when they discover little features here and there.

And in a true fashion for our small and medium-sized business customers, we offer a free account for businesses with modest needs. If you’ve seen our website, our paid plans are extremely competitive and offer much value for money. Many users said they signed up with us because they were put off by high prices and complicated plans from other competing solutions.

We also run a tight and small team around South-East Asia. Sales, marketing, engineering and support are spread over Singapore, Vietnam and India. I’ve just added an office in China. This makes us extremely responsive to users no matter their time zone. I’m always happy to consider feature requests from users and many of them contact me directly through chat apps and speak their mind or deliver praises!

Tention Free : Could you share with us some secrets and strategies behind your success?

It’s wasn’t plain sailing or easy in the beginning. There were nights where I wasn’t sure what to expect tomorrow. I wasn’t even paying myself! I’m happy to be successful today but in hindsight it was a roller coaster ride.

Firstly, your first few customers are royalty. Absolutely. They’re your pioneer customers, they have paid your bills and they’ve given you valuable feedback along the way. I made promises to them in the beginning when I started EMERGE App and I’m still keeping them despite changing my pricing and product mix along the way. I’m still very thankful to them today and I treat them like old friends whenever they drop in to chat.

Secondly, you need to inject some smart brains and insights into your business. Put your ego aside and listen to the wisdom of truly successful people who have been there and done that. I was glad to have the insights of an entrepreneur who sold her helpdesk chat application. That was inspiring! I also had the ear of early and later stage investors who told me what they really thought of my business and how I could grow to the next level.

Thirdly, you need to assemble a great team behind you. You cannot possibly do everything yourself. I found my team in different countries as I recognised skilled young talent and economic advantages that each country had to offer. Don’t be afraid to look beyond your shores for investors, employees and partners. But this means I’m flying every second week!

Finally, you need to put your money where your mouth is. I believed there was a market for EMERGE App and I invested my own money in it from the very beginning. While EMERGE App was in stealth mode and not earning any revenue, I had to do systems integration work on the side to support and feed it. That was a tough time juggling internal and external projects. I’ve invested about $1 million of my own money in EMERGE App so far!

Tention Free : What are you working on now and what can we look forward to?

For a start, we roll out a new version of EMERGE App every three weeks! How many web applications that you know do this? We try to include new features requested by customers as well as bug fixes with every release. We’re building in a lot of task and role-based functionality that people have asked for.

Also, as you know, apps are pretty much mobile nowadays. EMERGE App was primarily designed for a desktop browser but it can be used in any web browser really, including tablets. We’re tweaking it to be more mobile responsive so your employees in sales, fulfillment and warehouse can bring it about their work and not be tied to a physical desk or cubicle.

We’re also going big into China. As mentioned, I opened an office there and I’m taking tentative steps to see how we can position and sell EMERGE App. There’s the Chinese language conversion of course as well as managing expectations from local customers when they purchase a subscription from us. Advertising and marketing in the Chinese market where mobile penetration is high is another challenge.

Going forward, I want a local presence in the European and Middle East markets as well. For some reason we’re extremely popular there. Perhaps it’s the high concentration of SMEs plus there’s a lot of talent selling handcrafted things, food and accessories online. We’ll be localising EMERGE App for those markets and appointing partners shortly.

Tention Free : How can we find and follow you online?

I’m flattered! I prefer to let my results speak for themselves but if you’re interested in hearing my latest rants you can follow me at: